Standards for the IoT

December 2, 2016

With news reports out this week, that the 3GPP standard is set to be in 35% of low power wide area (LPWA) network connections by 2020, our Working Group RAN3 Chairman - Philippe Reininger - has given a timely presentation at the IoT Business & Technologies Congress (November 30, in Singapore), outlining the latest progress made on specifications for the IoT market.

3GPP now has what he described as a 'portfolio of technologies' that 3GPP operators can use to address market needs. The presentation helps to explain and summarise the major features - eMTC, NB-IOT and EC-GSM-IoT - completed in 3GPP Release 13.

However, the main part of the presentation covered the enhancements that will be published in Release-14, which is due for completion by June 2017.

3GPP at the 5G EcoSphere

November 10, 2016

We have two speakers in the 5G Infrastructure Association's 5G conference "Enabling the 5G EcoSphere", in Rome this week. There are also many friends of 3GPP - Past Chairs, Delegates and Partners - in attendance, to discuss how standards will help make 5G happen.

He emphasised how much effort will go in to 3GPP Release 15, to ensure that it delivers the 5G Phase 1 system definition, including all that is needed for deploying a base system.

His presentation included details of the group's work on network slicing, the functional network architecture and on a Quality of Service model that may bring what he described as 'lighter QoS sessions'.

Dino Flore, 3GPP RAN Chairman, spoke today - in a session on the 5G air interface and radio resource management. He told delegates that the 3GPP submission for 'IMT-2020' will include both the “New Radio of 5G” and LTE. He echoed details about the two phase approach to 5G - with the first specifications to be completed by September 2018 - for a subset of industry priorities. This will be followed by a full set of 5G specifications, addressing all of the identified use cases & requirements, by March 2020 (Release-16).

The BBWF week at the Excel also hosted the 3GPP Project Coordination Group (PCG) & Organizational Partner (OP) meetings, at which the group officially decided that the 3GPP system will be known by the name “5G” from Release 15 onwards.

In addition to that formality, the OP also approved the applications of three new Market Representation Partners in 3GPP: